Warwickshire-based MSL sold in multimillion-pound deal

By Peter Davison

4 January 2023

Share

The Business Magazine article image for: Warwickshire-based MSL sold in multimillion-pound deal

14/11/2019. Leamington Spa, UK. Staff picture for Wright Hassall, Leamington Spa, WARKS,UK. Photo credit: Dave Warren/Picture Team

MSL, a provider of modern surveying services headquartered in Warwickshire, has been sold in a multi-million-pound deal with the help of Leamington law firm Wright Hassall.

Midland Survey Limited (MSL) has been acquired by private-equity backed environmental services company Lucion Services, supported by Palatine Private Equity and HSBC.

Law firm Wright Hassall was instructed to complete the corporate legals for the founder shareholders of MSL, which has five UK offices across the country and is headquartered in Southam.

The company provides specialist surveying services – including measured building surveys, underground utility surveys, topographical surveys, 3D modelling and CCTV drainage surveys – to sectors including infrastructure, commercial, residential and the public sector.

MSL is the fourth acquisition into Lucion Group in the last 12 months, highlighting the growth in its building surveying and assessment service lines.

Lucion Group is a purpose-driven community of businesses, dedicated to protecting people and planet. CEO, Phil Rozier, said of the deal: “To complete our fourth acquisition in 12 months is a remarkable achievement.

“Having completed 12 acquisitions in total so far, Lucion has created the true environmental services platform that it set out to build. Building a business that offers multiple complimentary services, to our existing and enhanced client base, truly does allow us to protect people and planet every day.”

David Johnson, Managing Director at MSL, said: “We are extremely excited to be joining Lucion Group and thank Wright Hassall for their support and advice on this deal.

“We are looking forward to a bright future as part of the Lucion Group, one that will be beneficial to all our clients.”

Wright Hassall Partner and Head of Corporate Team, Steve Halkett (pictured), who advised on the deal, said: “Since forming in 1988, MSL have grown their reputation as trusted suppliers of skilled surveying experts nationwide.

“As a local company, I am really pleased Wright Hassall has been able to assist in the next step of their journey.”

Heligan Group (Corporate Finance) and LDP Luckmans (Accounting and Tax) also acted for the founder shareholders of MSL in the deal, while Addleshaws (Corporate Legal) and BDO (Financial Due Diligence) represented Lucion.

By Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country.

An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts.

Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.